Data Analytics - Reshaping the Future of Travel & Hospitality Sector Date:   Thursday , June 30, 2016 Headquartered in California, Infogain is a global leader in providing IT services like Knowledge Management, CRM, Integration, Mobility, Software Engineering and Application Management solutions to organizations worldwide. Travel and hospitality sector is a growing sector and the incessant development of travel and hospitality industry has been motivating the key industry players to embrace exceptional measures for enhancing business efficiency by improving overall customer experience. A lot of travel industry tycoons are eyeing the science of consumerism to take the pulse of the consumers. The industry giants are concentrating more on the dynamic behavior of consumers so that they can forecast business profitability generated by enhancing sales. Consumers of the 21st century are more tech-savvy; thanks to smartphones that enable the Gen Y consumers to go for mobile bookings in the comfort of their home. In such a state of affairs, it becomes highly imperative to keep an eye on changing consumer behavior and make the most of the digitalized trends in travel and hospitality sector. Unfortunately, the truth is that more and more hotels adhere to the age-old norms instead of adapting to the modern trends. Being a data-rich industry, hotels and travel service providers should employ analytics to take advantage of the data to make huge profits. Why Should Travel & Hospitality Sector Utilize Data Analytics? Travel and hospitality sector underwent a radical revolution over the last decade owing to - - Ever-growing technological innovation and digitization. - Knowledgeable customers with plethora of information available at their fingertips. - Enhanced purchasing power of consumers leading to higher demand for customization. Thus, it has become indispensable for the market players to take advantage of this potential so as to reformulate their business strategies. Since the travel and hospitality sector is growing swiftly, the number of vendors is also escalating; thus the demand for data analytics in the hospitality sector is on the rise. Data analytics play a key role in travel and hospitality sector by helping analyze the latest trends and buying patterns of consumers. Besides this, it offers the following advantages: 1. Tailored Consumer Experience: Data analytics can efficiently personalize the experience of a traveler. It enables travel and hospitality sector to offer more targeted products and services to suit the needs and preferences of the traveler. Consequently, it helps multiply profits by building a strong business bond with customers besides enhancing the number of loyal customers at the same time. It helps in tracking and comprehending the buying habits of consumers, their grievances and opinions by evaluating data accumulated from social media, online travel and hospitality forums. This analysis helps the travel and hospitality sector to recognize the objective of the customers so that they can design a business strategy accordingly. 2. Recommendations and Ratings by Customers: Consumers of the present century have a significant impact in maintaining the reputability of hotels and travel service providers. The reviews and ratings of hotels posted online by consumers play a vital role in influencing prospective travelers who depend on digital media such as tripadvisor, Airbnb or any other platforms for all their queries pertaining to travelling. 3. Sales & Marketing: Data analytics can help hotels and travel service providers to significantly shape up sales and marketing efforts applied on their target customers by providing them with tailored offers as per their choice. A thorough analysis of the huge amount of available data helps hotels and travel service providers to comprehend the right time, right channel and the right place to put forward specific offers and services. Moreover, they can also roll out real-time offers by keeping an eye on the location of the customer by tracking them through GPS technology. 4. Streamlines the Varied Industry Operations: Data analytics encourages a consumer-driven decision-making approach. In the era of consumerism, it becomes greatly essential to shift the entire focus to the consumers and know their buying habits for providing them with a better service. This will help the industry to streamline different operations and also encourage hotels to become proactive decision-makers and reap multiple business benefits. 5. Optimum Utilization of Resources: Data analytics helps businesses track individual demands such as purchasing power of the consumer, buying patterns of the consumer, size of the family, and the preferences of the consumers. This helps in diverting the right resources in the right direction to yield the finest results. 6. Create A Better Pricing Policy: While making travel plans, pricing is the main factor that consumers take into consideration. Analytics can smoothly evaluate the pricing policy of competitors so that travel service providers can come up with an attractive pricing strategy to suit the requirements of their target customers. Thus, in simple words, analytics can help travel and hospitality sector by helping understanding consumer behavior, boosting revenue and enhancing operational efficiency. The above-mentioned factors clearly elucidate that analytics can revolutionize the travel and hospitality sector. Since we are living in an age of Information Technology, it is highly indispensable for travel and hospitality industry to overcome all stumbling blocks and make way for digitization of the industry by bidding adieu to the primitive trends. Though data analytics is currently in a nascent stage in travel and hospitality sector, rapid technological progress and the introduction of sophisticated analytics will bring about a significant revolutionary change in the industry in next few years. A rational implementation of data analytics will go a long way in helping vendors maximize profits besides enabling them to cater to the needs of their consumers by providing high-quality service.